The Dark Chronicles

by Jeremy Duns

  The questions could wait.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ I said. ‘Try the window.’

  She ran over and started trying to prise it open. It was jammed. There was no time to fiddle with straps, so I just put the rifle back in its bag and threw that into the trombone case, then joined her. The footsteps in the corridor were now accompanied by shouted commands, and sirens had started wailing outside. I smashed the case against the glass. Now the sound of the steps shifted in our direction. I swept away the shards with the back of my arm, then helped Isabelle crawl over the frame. Once she had jumped to the ground, I passed the case to her and followed her over. The door of the room crashed open as I was landing and a voice called out: ‘Federal police! No one leave the building!’

  I took the case back from Isabelle and we started running. Several policemen jumped down from the window and started pursuit. As Isabelle and I reached the front of the building, I glanced to the right and saw people streaming from the club in a panic. They were being greeted by a large contingent of police, all of whom were armed with machine guns. I could see J. J. and his entourage engaged in furious debate with them, and the man in the dress shirt who had laughed at us earlier was being pushed into the back of one of the unmarked cars that were parked behind the police line.

  Those cars stood between us and the Peugeot.

  I shouted to Isabelle to follow me, and headed towards the garden of the neighbouring house. The fence was already half-trampled and bent in on itself, so it was easy enough to leap over. I could hear Isabelle right behind me and, just behind her, shouting and gunfire.

  We ran through the garden, passing a couple of frightened club-goers crouching behind an empty bathtub, and navigated the next fence, and the one after that. I carried the trombone case above my head – it made running easier, and protected my eyes from the hammering of the rain. At the fourth or perhaps fifth garden, I gestured to Isabelle that we should move back towards the street. Manning’s car was directly opposite, and we headed for it. A few seconds after we emerged onto the road, the men following us reached it, too. They alerted their colleagues down by the club’s entrance, and we won a few seconds as they shouted about us to each other. Then some of the men by the entrance headed towards their cars.

  Isabelle reached Manning’s car just before me.

  ‘Let me drive!’ she called out. ‘I know the city.’

  I threw her the keys. She jumped in and started it up, and I ran round to the passenger side and leapt in just as she was moving off. She reversed a few yards, making the men behind us stop in their tracks, and then headed straight for the police cars now hurtling down the street towards us.

  There was a succession of shots from both directions. Nothing hit us, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Struggling in the enclosed space, it took me a few seconds to get the rifle out of the case and find the ammunition. Then I wound down the window and leaned out to fire at the cars coming our way. I didn’t hit anything, either: it was a self-loading semi-automatic, and although it could manage twenty to thirty rounds a minute, it was designed for accurate shooting at close quarters – not against moving targets while moving oneself. Isabelle pushed the accelerator down as far as it would go, and several of the cars veered out of the way. We caught two of them as we passed, and for a few yards we skidded on the wet tarmac and I thought we were going to end up in one of the storm drains that lined each side of the road, but she brought it round and pulled us back into the centre at the last moment.

  Some of the group who had chased us through the gardens had reached their cars and were now coming up fast behind us. The man in the car closest was leaning out of the passenger window and firing his Kalashnikov, and he aimed well because there was a dull crack and thousands of tiny tributaries suddenly filled the rear window, before the whole surface gave way and fell into the back seat like a sheet of crushed ice.

  As Isabelle took a sharp left turn, I carried on firing, but my knuckles were under assault from the relentless needles of rain and there were no streetlights, making my view through the sight next to useless.

  There were now five cars on our tail: three dark, two lighter-coloured, all Peugeots of various models. Bullets were now peppering our bodywork every few seconds, and I realized we had to do something fast, before they hit a tyre, or the engine, or us. There were hardly any other cars on the street – it was well after curfew – which meant we couldn’t easily create a diversion or block them. But the lack of lighting might help: if we got far enough ahead in a residential area, we could lose them in the darkness.

  As if reading my thoughts, Isabelle took a late left turn, dimmed the lights for two streets and then swerved into a sudden right. Now we had just three cars in pursuit, the other two not having been tight enough on the turnings and skidding past, the Doppler effect of their sirens echoing after them.

  I had run out of ammunition, but our pursuers didn’t seem to be holding off on the shooting. It seemed unlikely they would have brought this much firepower with them had they just been out on a routine raid of the club. But I still couldn’t figure it out: if they were chasing me for the Russians on the golf course, how had they known where to look? They clearly hadn’t followed us out here. Did they think we were someone else? Alarm bells were ringing in my head – and most of them involved the person sitting at the wheel next to me.

  I threw the rifle onto the rear seat, then grabbed the Tokarev from the glove compartment and leaned back out of the window. We passed, finally, a lighted building – another club? – which gave me a clear view of the driver of the nearest car for one vital second, and I managed to shatter his windscreen. There was a scream and the car swerved wildly – another of our pursuers was lost to the drains. But the remaining two cars suddenly loomed out from the darkness. As a series of shots thudded into the dashboard, bringing up a storm of sparks, Isabelle momentarily lost control, and then there was a horrific scraping sound as both cars came alongside us, squeezing us between them, and I was looking right into the face of one of the policemen as he raised a pistol and fired.

  Isabelle slowed the car at the same moment, trying to gain control, and the shot went wide, but as a result both cars drew ahead of us and they immediately started turning to block off the road. I leaned over Isabelle and, shoving her away, grabbed hold of the wheel and spun it towards with me with as much force as I could manage, one hand over the other. The next few seconds were a havoc of screeched tyres and broken headlights and gunfire as we bumped across open ground, until finally, by some miracle, we hit tarmac again, and Isabelle put her foot down and I fell back into my seat. Through the rear-view mirror I could see that the police were busy trying to disentangle themselves from their roadblock, so I shouted at her to take a quick turn, then another, then another, until eventually I couldn’t see any headlights behind us and my breathing slowed and I put away the gun and told her to keep driving.

  They couldn’t have been after me: they wouldn’t have cared enough about a couple of dead Russians to shoot to kill. They must have been looking for something else.

  ‘Do you know the Victoria Palace Hotel?’ I asked Isabelle.

  She nodded, and we headed for it.

  *

  The street was dark but for a shimmering yellow pool where the moonlight struck the rain-soaked macadam. I stepped back from the curtain and looked at Isabelle. She was sitting in the easy chair by the bed, her chin resting on one hand.

  ‘Strip,’ I said.

  She looked at me from out of the darkness, but didn’t move.

  ‘Are all Englishmen this romantic?’ she said, tilting her head.

  ‘It’s not a come-on,’ I said. ‘Strip now, or I’ll do it for you.’

  ‘Do you enjoy the rough stuff, is that it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s not it. It’s that I don’t like being taken for a fool.’ I took the pistol from my holster and pointed it at her.

  Her eyes widened. Then she stood up, shrugged and s
tarted to unlace her boots.

  ‘How did you know I was in the green room?’ I asked. ‘At the club.’

  She looked surprised. ‘I saw you slip away. I guessed you had seen something backstage and wished to return for another look.’

  ‘And the police?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t believe, even in wild and woolly Lagos, that the police fire on people just for fleeing a raid. There were five cars chasing us, and they were shooting to kill.’

  ‘So were you, non?’ Her boots off, she started unbuttoning her tunic.

  ‘How long have you been with French intelligence?’ I said.

  She stretched out her arms so the dress fell to the floor, leaving her in her bathing suit. ‘How long have you been with British intelligence?’

  She hadn’t even denied it. I walked over and slapped her across the face. ‘Where is it? Where’s the transmitter?’

  She grabbed my forearm – she had a strong grip – and wiped her face. ‘T’es fou, ou quoi? Why would I let the police know we were at the club? I came to warn you they were there, remember?’

  That was true. But her story stank nevertheless. Nobody else had known where I was going, and I didn’t believe that the police were acting on their own initiative. We were white: if they hadn’t known who we were, they should at least have been worried about causing a diplomatic incident. They hadn’t looked in the least bit worried.

  I turned my attention back to Isabelle. ‘What are your instructions regarding me?’ I asked her.

  ‘None,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been in touch with my people yet. And as you can see,’ she added sarcastically, ‘I don’t have any transmitters hidden on me.’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘When we met at the Yacht Club, I thought you were British intelligence—’

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘Instinct. Then, when you asked to go the Afrospot, I decided to come with you and see. I always enjoy an adventure.’

  Despite the slap of a few moments ago, she was smiling. I recognized the sort: she was still under the misapprehension that espionage was a glamorous business. She’d learn the hard way; everyone did, eventually.

  ‘We were good, weren’t we?’ she said, bringing my hand back up to her face, where I’d hit her. ‘Me driving, you shooting…’

  ‘Is that your idea of kicks?’ I asked, but she was good, better than she could possibly know, because my mind was moving without me being able to control it, moving back many years, to another room.

  She started moving my hand across her cheek, making me caress her, and I didn’t resist, just stood there as she did it. One of my fingers brushed against her mouth, and she grabbed it with her lip, and then her hands were in my hair and she was leading me over to the bed, where she kissed me. I could taste the sweat on her, from the club, from the car. She moved her hands across my sodden shirt and lifted it, touching my stomach, and there was a fluttering there that I hadn’t felt in years, and I let myself be transported back, let myself drift away in her skilful arms. As she unhooked her bra and I bit into her flesh, we fell into the cool grey sheets and she cried out to me – ‘Robert! Oh, Robert!’ – but I wasn’t there. I was in another place, many years ago, and so I couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but lie there as she rubbed her body against mine, two animals in the dirt and the heat, and my mind cried back, shouting out in its little cell, again and again, despite everything: ‘Anna! Anna! Anna!’

  XI

  Tuesday, 25 March 1969, Lagos

  I woke with a start and reached for the gun. The room was pitch black and my chest was soaked in sweat. There was a sound, and it took me a moment to locate and identify it. It was coming from the woman lying next to me: her body was rising and falling in a gentle rhythm, and a low whistling was emanating from her nostrils.

  The previous night’s events flooded back. I flicked the bedside light switch, but nothing happened. Taking care not to wake Isabelle, I climbed out of bed and walked over to the door. The main light wasn’t working either. That explained why I was drenched – there’d been a power cut, so there was no air conditioning.

  I looked at the luminous dial of my watch. Twenty past five. Pritchard’s plane would be here in just over two hours. I had to get dressed and get outside. But to where, and to do what, exactly? It was too early for Anna to be starting work at the embassy, and I would be too conspicuous hanging round there at this time of night. There was nothing more to do until dawn.

  The wind was shooting volleys of rain against the window, making an eerie fluttering noise every few seconds. I went over, parted the curtains by a finger’s breadth and peered through the mosquito net. I couldn’t detect any movement, either in the street or in the cars parked by the entrance. The rain was beating furiously against the surface of the swimming pool – no diplomats sipping cocktails now. Across the dark water, the lights of the trawlers pulsed softly.

  I took a seat in the corner of the room and considered the naked woman sprawled carelessly across the bed. I’d deliberately brought her back here, blowing my base, because if she was working against me that was the quickest way to force her hand. It had been my strategy from the start, and in some ways it seemed to be working. Since my arrival in Lagos less than twelve hours previously, Slavin had been killed, his assassin had taken his own life, and I’d been shot at by the local police. Someone was working against me, and pretty effectively. Was it Isabelle, though? I was starting to have second thoughts. She hadn’t been out of my sight since leaving the Yacht Club, except for those two minutes in the Afrospot when I’d left her to return to the green room. But even if she had found a telephone in that time, the police couldn’t have reached the club so fast. There had been close to a dozen cars. Perhaps she had given a signal earlier – to one of the bouncers, or even someone at the Yacht Club.

  But none of this seemed to fit the woman sleeping so easily a few feet away from me. After we had made love, I’d feigned sleep with one hand gripping the Tokarev, waiting for any sudden movement. But she had drifted off faster than most husbands. If she had wanted me dead, would she have slept naked and unarmed in the same room as me, knowing I had a pistol and rifle within easy reach?

  It wasn’t just Isabelle that didn’t add up. In the turmoil of the previous evening’s events, I’d made several assumptions on the hoof – as light began to seep into the room, I went through them again.

  I started with the killer on the golf course. My first reaction had been fury at Sasha: I had presumed that, despite my threats, he’d sent someone out to kill Slavin. But that couldn’t be right. The rifle had been left at the club for the Russian, but it had not been involved in the killing of Slavin – that had been accomplished easily enough with a pistol. A cold thought swept through me: Slavin’s killer had to have already been out here.

  But why?

  I thought back to the Afrospot: had I missed anything? Quite possibly – I’d had very little time to investigate. I tried to picture the green room again, but nothing new came to mind. What else had been there – and why had that woman stared at me like that when she’d first seen me? Perhaps she was the contact, and had thought I was the Russian. When I hadn’t quoted poetry at her, she’d realized her mistake and retreated.

  My immediate instinct was to return there at once and forget meeting Pritchard, but I rejected the idea just as quickly. Slavin’s death implicated me as the traitor, and unless I gave a plausible explanation for it, Pritchard would come hunting my hide with the full might of the Service. I’d have to give him the impression we were working together, while at the same time not allowing him to draw too close. It would be a delicate balancing act, especially if my thoughts about the rifle were correct, in which case he’d stick to me like glue. I could, of course, neglect to tell him about the rifle. But Pritchard had clout, and I might be able to use some of it to get some more answers.

  I picked my shirt from the carpet and reached for the cigarettes in the
pocket. There were twelve left in the pack. I wondered if I would find Anna before they had all been smoked. I changed the focus of the thought: I would find Anna before they had all been smoked. The phrase from Slavin’s interview that I had been trying to avoid thinking about once again slipped into my mind: ‘the one true love of her life’.

  A muscle in my stomach tensed. It was partly hunger – except for a handful of peanuts at the Yacht Club, I hadn’t eaten anything since getting off the plane. It was partly fatigue – I’d been under huge strain and had only managed a few hours’ sleep. But I knew that it was also partly a sudden, overpowering longing for Anna. Something had awoken when Isabelle had touched me, but I had to put it to sleep. It didn’t matter if Anna had loved me, or I her – that was over twenty years ago, and a lot of blood had passed under the bridge since. She was a highly dangerous professional who had gone to extraordinary lengths to betray me, and who had almost certainly had a hand in murdering Father. This was not a woman to long for. This was a woman I had to find.

  I finished my smoke, then felt for the case beneath the chair and lifted out the rifle. The night hadn’t been a complete waste, after all: I had found this. Perhaps, if I looked hard enough, it might offer up some clues as to what was going on.

  It was in perfect condition. Even in the dim light, the laminated hardwood had a noticeable sheen. That meant it hadn’t been used yet – gum would have been applied to lessen its visibility in the field otherwise. I wasn’t sure if that meant anything, but I stored the thought anyway.

  Then I started to feel my way around the weapon, figuring out how it fitted together. It was a very different beast from the Enfields I’d used in the war. The sight, as I had already discovered, was mounted over the receiver instead of the buttstock, which was itself unusually long and sleek. Hard to transport something this size. How had it been brought into the country? Diplomatic bag?